This morning's red post collection includes the October 27th mid patch update, a new /dev on Story hooks, a look at the data behind spamming spells, Meddler on plants and plans to remove crit runes, a Worlds 2016 Finals remix of Zedd's Ignite, a reminder to avoid scams this holiday season, and more!

/Dev: On Story Hooks

"The things we leave behind: Narrative hooks in large-scale story universes

Many of us, myself very much included, can be more than a little obsessive about the things we love and geek out about, whether it’s LoL, Star Wars, Forgotten Realms, 40K, WoW, Harry Potter, the Marvel universe, or whatever. These are all huge, rich universes with considerable depth, history, stories, and characters we love (or love to hate). Speaking for myself, when I get into things like these, I really like to get into them.

I’m sure many of you can relate.

Down the rabbit hole

I think a big part of the love we have for these universes is that the deeper we delve, the more there is to discover. That feeling of being able to go further and further down the rabbit hole and still uncover more is one of the key things that keeps me coming back. Every time I dive in, I see more tantalizing hooks, more hints of events and history, glimpses of strange creatures, or snippets of backstory that set my imagination afire. These universes are generally living ones as well - their stories are continuing to be developed through games, comics, novels, films, TV shows, and suchlike.

There’s something satisfying about seeing story hooks, ideas, and snippets of backstory that you might have been aware of for years, finally get paid off. Sometimes these things were originally little more than a throwaway line, but dammit, we real fans will grab hold of those lines, speculate on them, imagine what they could mean, and then be over-the-moon (well, if their realization lives up to expectations) when they come to fruition.

Slaughter Sheds

It’s like the excitement I had when it was revealed we’d finally learn what the hell the Clone Wars were all about, long after they were first mentioned so many years ago in A New Hope (the artist formally known as Star Wars…), or that an entire book series was being launched focused on the Horus Heresy, an era of the 40K universe that had previously only been written about as legend and myth.

Part of this is undeniably that satisfying moment of being completely in the loop with the writers/creators - being in on the joke, understanding what’s being referenced, and really getting the import of and weight of what’s going on. It’s that feeling of seeing an after-the-credits snippet and getting a tiny glimpse of a character that may appear in a later film and understanding exactly who that is - what it could mean - without having to turn to your neighbour and whisper, “Who’s that?”

While it’s fun and satisfying to see loose story threads pulled and explored, if everything is tied up, then there’s not much more for us to come back to. Now, in a story that’s being told as a singular narrative, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing - the author/writer/creator only gives you the details you need to know at a time that best serves the story. For instance, knowing which crewmembers are Cylons at the start of Battlestar Galactica would eliminate all the tension, and knowing the origin of Hodor’s name would seriously detract from the impact of that scene.

Ionia Market

Peripheral stories

Things operate a little different in a big narrative universe, of course. By that term, I mean one that has an endless array of potential stories that can be told through multiple different media (such as games, comics, novels, etc), rather than through a singular narrative (such as a one-off book series).

The trick is to bake in plenty of hooks, but not leave them all hanging around too long.

For an example of the two, think of Harry Potter (a singular narrative) and the Marvel universe (multiple stories, some of which may be re-told and re-imagined). The way we are developing League of Legends falls very much into that second category. It’s focused more on the world and the characters than on a centralized plot - which means there can be a virtually endless array of stories told. There may be some larger plots that connect many of our characters and regions (as the Infinity Stones do in the MCU, for instance), but it’s the charactersthat drive the stories. In a big, ongoing narrative universe, having plenty of hanging story hooks is most definitely a good thing.

Scholes Shurima Palace

For writers, story hooks that have already been worked into the history and stories are like mana from heaven - they provide a stream of narrative opportunities. They can provide that spark of inspiration that might lead to something as humble as a snippet of dialogue or a short-story, but also to things like amazing fan-fic, or be the trigger that launches an epic series of novels.

Every intriguing snippet, hook, or piece of history can form the basis for a potential new story. Some of those hooks and threads can be resolved and explored in a format that’s appropriate, while other big secrets might be held back and revealed in a way that’s suitably dramatic and does it justice - others may never be resolved, for one reason or another (that’s OK too, so long as they aren’t vital to a character’s story).

For the audience, dangling story threads and hooks provide areas of intrigue and speculation, a tiny glimpse of events that hint at bigger things yet to come, or suggest a deeper and richer world history/backstory. They can also function to suggest a much bigger world out there, one that is vibrant with stories just waiting to be discovered. Finally, they also give the audience a chance to voice what story hooks they’d like to see developed, giving the creators a better idea of what they should focus on.

Shurima

The one thing that’s most important, however, is avoiding creating frustration by dangling out a million story hooks that are never developed or followed up. That kind of thing can be irritating, and can have a detrimental effect, not just with the audience, but on the narrative universe as a whole. It can start to feel like there’s nothing behind all those hints and nods - it’s just a facade of depth, with no actual substance.

So, the trick is to bake in plenty of hooks, but not leave them all hanging around too long without any kind of follow-up - particularly the big cliffhangers. To leave story hooks hanging indefinitely makes it feel like there’s no intention to come back to flesh them out - it starts to make the world feel static, like nothing is being developed, and that none of those tantalizing hints will ever be explained.

Hooks in League

Over the last year or so, we’ve been making a conscious effort here at Riot to inject a lot more story hooks into our background, while also looking to start paying off some of the hooks that have been dangling and neglected for too long (we know there are lot of them…).

Many of the story hooks we’ve started seeding have been appearing in our newer champion bios and accompanying color text stories, as well as through new champion VO, short stories, reveal animations, in the updated background snippets that appear in-game, and such. We definitely plan to come back to many of these hooks, while others have just been thrown out to be used (or not) by anyone who feels inspired by the opportunity they provide.

New hooks were being thrown out that could lead to other stories and developments.

At the same time, we’ve been looking to start resolving and exploring some of the plots and hooks that have been left hanging. For example, in Burning Tides: The Reckoning, we saw the story of Twisted Fate and Graves move forward, shifting them into a new stage of their relationship.

Likewise, we learnt in that story who it was that gunned down Miss Fortune’s parents when she was a child, something that had only ever be hinted at previously, and we saw her revenge getting played out - and then further developed in Shadow and Fortune. And while these threads were being tied up and resolved, new hooks were being thrown out that could lead to other stories and developments.

Similarly, stories like the Bird and Branch and Bloodline moved the timeline forward, and began to edge us towards certain conflicts in Shurima while further developing our understanding of the world. Meanwhile, the history of what the Ruined King did to create the Shadow Isles has been slowly leaked out through the bios of Shadow Isles champions like Kalista and Hecarim and the poem The Princeling’s Lament.

Bilgewater

Of course, we still have a long way to go, and there are LOTS of hanging threads that we can’t wait to explore and develop (Who is the mysterious “C” that Caitlyn is pursuing? Where are the other Darkin? Who is going to come out on top in the Freljordian civil war? What is going to happen when Diana and Leona come face-to-face? Will Illaoi and Gangplank ever rekindle things? Will Renekton be able to overcome his insanity, and stop himself from killing his brother, Nasus? What is LeBlanc’s ultimate goal? And OH MY GOD what would happen if Ezreal kissed Shyvana’s leg? Etc. Etc.).

It would be kind of sad if every hook was resolved. As I said earlier, one of the key things that brings me back to some of my favorite story universes, time and again, are new things to discover - but we want to start finding the right balance of resolving some mysteries and advancing some storylines.

Many of the big mysteries and story hooks will be paid off, and I can’t wait to discover how they pan out and what they might lead to. We are definitely looking for our story to move forward. We don’t want Runeterra to be a place of stasis. Some hooks will not be fully played out until the time is right - to do otherwise would spoil some potentially really cool moments - while others will just be left to dangle for a while - something we (or you guys) could always come back to and explore in the future.

The League of Legends universe is a BIG place, with loads of wonderful characters - and we have lots stories to tell..."

TURBO MODE: The Data Behind Your Spell Spamming

We also have a new Clairvoyance blog from Jeopardy and Riot Nitsuabo that looks at the data behind players around the worlds mashing their keyboards to spam spells!

"SUP PLAYAZ. It’s your favorite data science playboy JEOPARDY with famed machine learning mogul RIOT NITSUABO here to share some insights about how to be less of a scrub. We gather data on just about everything that happens in live League of Legends matches—and we mean everything, including the exact number of times every player in the world uses their abilities in-game.

When we started looking into the data we collected, we found some pretty weird results that will be quite interesting for all kinds of players. Let's jump into it.

OBSERVATION 1: RIVEN ONLY

So, before we get into the weird stuff, let's start out with one example that's relatively simple to wrap your mind around. Riven is commonly perceived as a champion who requires #mechanics. With no mana costs and relatively short cooldowns, getting the most out of the combo queen requires careful timing and deliberate sequencing of your spell rotations. The data below doesn’t capture the sequencing stuff, but it does let us look at the correspondence between player skill and frequency of Riven's spell casts. Basically, does MMR increase with number of buttons mashed?

Do y'all like reading charts? Because we're about to read the everloving crap out of this chart. Here's how, in seventeen easy steps:

1. The y-axis shows the number of spell casts per minute, with higher values meaning the player activated an ability more often.

2. The x-axis is player rank. The far left side consists of wood tier scrublords like Riot's very own Rumtumtummers. The far right side is probably Faker.

11. The dark line shows the median number of spell casts per minute for Riven players at that MMR. That means that half of all Riven players cast the ability less than this amount, and half cast it more than this amount.

17. The pale ribbon captures what we would consider a representative range of activations for Riven players at each rank—the lower bound of the ribbon shows the 5th percentile of activations per minute, meaning only five percent of Riven players of this skill level in this region cast the ability fewer times than this. The upper bound of the ribbon shows the 95th percentile, meaning that only five percent of Riven players of this skill level in this region cast the ability more times than this. Put differently, 90 percent of Riven players in a region have spell casts per minute within the values bound by the Riven ribbon.

So, the average Diamond-ranked Riven player uses Broken Wings (Q) more than the average Bronze player. BUT, even some of the lowest-ranked Riven players use Q more often than the typical Diamond-ranked player, as per the ribbon. So, obviously, just spamming Q doesn't make you good. We can tell from the pale ribbon that there are actually plenty of Diamond-ranked Riven players who use their Q less than the typical Bronze-ranked player. Not all great Rivens spam Q.

If we look at the rest of Riven's abilities, we see that the trend also applies to her E, and to a lesser extent for her W or R.

OBSERVATION 2: SUPPORT UTILITY

So, based on the Riven example, you're probably thinking "okay, higher-ranked players tend to use their abilities more." But—pushes up glasses and sniffs—it actually depends on which champ is being played. Many supports have high-utility spells that tend to be used less frequently at higher MMR’s.

Let’s take Thresh’s hook (Q), for example. It has tons of power whenever you haven't yet used it. Saving it forces your opponents to play as if you could use it at any point. They have to stay positioned safely behind their own minions, even if it causes them to miss some CS in the process. The threat of a hook also discourages enemies from poking you aggressively under your own tower, because who wants to write their own Death Sentence?

Janna's Howling Gale (Q) and Nami's Aqua Prison (Q) work similarly—they can be used as an aggressive poke or engage tool, but they tend be more reliable as a counter-engage. If an enemy is charging full-speed into a fight, it's easier to accurately predict their movements compared to when they're just pacing back and forth to farm, so you've got a better shot at landing the skillshot.

OBSERVATION 3: CARRY UTILITY

Of course, supports aren’t the only group of champions this applies to. Some carry champs have abilities with valuable skirmish utility. For the most part, these spells are very reliant on situational awareness; they often determine whether or not you win a trade against an opponent. These high-risk-high-reward spells aren’t usually used for damage—nobody in their right mind builds AP just so Fiora’s Riposte can poke a little harder, or so that Wukong’s Decoy does a little more damage. These spells also tend to have higher cooldowns (Riposte is 24 seconds at level one), so you have to make every button press count.

Draven’s Stand Aside (E) is an example of such a utility spell. At lower MMR’s, players might get flustered in fights and default to mashing out all of their abilities to maximize damage as quickly as possible. However, Draven’s E has the highest mana cost of all his non-ultimate abilities, so it isn’t a tool you should use in every trade. Instead, it should be saved as an engage or disengage against enemy champions—for example, if timed properly, it can interrupt Tristana’s Rocket Jump.

We’ve all seen the famous clip of Daigo’s Ken parrying Justin Wong’s Chun-Li for a game-winning comeback in Evo Moment #37. What if we told you that you could do the same thing with just a fraction of the skill or effort? That’s what Fiora’s Riposte (W) is for.

You can use it reactively or to make hard reads. Use it in response to CC to stun your opponent (see that Morgana Dark Binding coming at you?) or shield yourself from big damage (like a Darius execute). If you misuse it, you snare yourself in place for .75 seconds while it’s being cast, giving your opponent plenty of time to reposition around you. If you land it properly, you survive a huge burst of damage and might even turn the tables on your opponent with some hard CC.

OBSERVATION 4: REGIONAL DIFFERENCES (KR, BASICALLY)

Up until this point, we've been showing spell cast data across a few different regions, and it's all been pretty similar. But that isn't always the case, mostly because Koreans party differently than most other regions.

All around the world, Udyr players tend to use Phoenix stance (R) less as MMR increases—except in Korea. It's the one region that uses Phoenix stance more at higher MMR’s. Perhaps Phoenix stance is better for applying solo split-push pressure around the map? Its waveclear damage is unmatched by the rest of Udyr’s kit, especially if supplemented by an AP jungle item such as Runic Echoes. We don’t actually know—we don’t play Udyr. Let us know your theories in the comments below!

Another example of regional differences is the decline of Trundle Chomp (Q) in—yup, you guessed it, Korea—as MMR increases. While it's the spell of choice for top lane melee matchups and jungling, the spell is actually rarely used when Trundle is played as a support—in that role, his Pillar of Ice (E) is more widely used instead as a momentary CC/engage tool. In most regions, we see that Trundle’s Q increases with MMR, suggesting that players are playing him and using his Chomp more often in higher MMR melee top lane matchups. However, in Korea, we see Trundle being played more as a support in higher MMR, which, of course, gives him less opportunity to walk up and auto attack his lane opponents.

If you've read this far, congrats: you have a Diamond-level MMR in reading and chart appreciation. What do you think your champion pool’s charts look like? Are you spamming some spells too often and other spells too little? Have any questions or comments? Our data people are gonna hang out in the comments below for a while, so ask us anything!"

Meddler Grab Bag - Plants, Crit Runes, & more

Next up we have a large grab bag of posts from Meddler - topics include plants, removing critical strike runes sometime in 2017, questions on specific champions, and more!

"I read through that Reddit thread yesterday. It's got a lot of strong sentiment in it that's valuable feedback. It's pretty light on discussion from in game experience with plants though (few actual PBE testers commenting), so it’s not a complete picture.

As with the other pre-season changes on the PBE plants are a work in progress. We’ve got some changes coming this week that should address a number of issues that have become apparent since the last set of changes (which occured just before PBE last week). Key details on those below. We’re also working on some backup plans for other possible issues that have been raised. For those sort of cases we want to have follow up plans ready in case they’re needed, but don’t want to make changes before things have been validated in game. Summary of those below too.

The biggest concern about plants themselves we've seen expressed overall is that they're random and that randomness has no place in a competitive game. Can fully understand the concern there, given randomness can make for pretty miserable experiences in game at the expense of player skill. We don’t think randomness is automatically a bad thing in a competitive setting though. We see it as more a tool that, if used in the right way, can create good tests of skill and emergent play or, if used badly, can nullify skill and create a ‘that was bullshit’ feeling. Examples of what we feel falls into each of those two categories:

Controlled Randomness in LoL at present we think is good for the game:

Elemental Dragons

Heavily telegraphed, rewards that support different strategies and counter them, system creates healthy game to game variety of experience. Equally available to both teams.

Kindred passive on enemy jungle camps

Creates a series of risk/reward trade offs for the Kindred player that they’re free to engage with or not. Enemies can choose to try and counter or not.

Scuttle crab’s exact location

You know roughly where Scuttle will be, and what the reward will be, but not the exact location it’ll be before getting there (assuming it’s up in the first place). Again, also equally available to both teams - it's a fair system, rather than one that biases in one direction or the other.

Draven axe landing location

There's some randomness to where an axe could land forcing an adaptive responsive. Possible locations are from a limited pool and, when appropriate are effectively non random (e.g. when chasing)

Small amounts of crit (runes in particular) have a small chance to skew a lane pretty strongly without any engaging gameplay. Crit’s much less problematic once champions have a moderate amount of it (becomes consistent ish), though even then there are arguments it should be removed. Avoiding getting into details of that since that’s a different topic and this is already a long post already. Should talk more about it sometime though, especially since it’s a subject we need a better consensus on internally too.

Regarding crit runes, we’ll be removing the ability to start the game with crit when we do work on runes (hopefully sometime next year)

Old Phage

Chance to slow on hit (mini, unreliable Frozen Mallet for anyone that didn’t play back then). Sometimes really lethal, sometimes completely ineffective. Did have some counterplay (e.g. only flash if the slow procs), overall though too much a case of randomness deciding situations rather than creating decisions.

Next iteration base off feedback from PBE testers and internal playtesting:

Fewer Blast Cone locations

We’ve been testing a pretty wide variety of Blast Cone locations recently, especially compared to early iterations of plants which only had a few. Conclusion there’s that some of those locations are good fits, others feel more abusive than interesting though and the large number of possible spawn points makes it hard to predict likely Blast Cone locations resulting in a more random than intended result.

Limit of 2 Blast Cones per quadrant

When it happens 3 Blast Cones in a single jungle quadrant has been resulting in too much Blast Cone chaining, given the proximity between them that creates. Chained Blast Cones are much harder to respond to and the second use seems to be less deliberate by the user as well.

Seedling time to 60s (from 30s)

Increasing telegraph time on upcoming plants to improve ability to plan around their presence.

Reduced overall plant spawn rates

Plant frequency has been too high in the version of the system currently on PBE, resulting in more frequent interactions than intended and therefore a greater overall impact on the game than desired. We’ll be reducing frequency of plant spawn a bit as a result.

Visual Polish

On the art side there’s also still some stuff yet to come (minimap icons that are clear but less dominant, icons for individual plants when clicked on, etc)

Other concerns we're tracking and preparing follow up changes if needed:

Ranged versus melee discrepancy

We haven’t seen it demonstrated yet, but it’s definitely possible plants will be too advantageous for ranged champs over melee. Fallback if needed’s to make them operate like Thresh lantern where it’s proximity to plant the allows interaction, not basic attack.

Randomness deciding outcomes,

We want randomness to create a range of situations where player decisions and execution can then decide the outcome. If randomness is instead deciding situations however we’ll then want to add additional telegraphing, both to spawn times and locations until players are able to recall possible plant locations and play around the possibility of them being up in an informed manner.

Plant interactions still too frequent

Upcoming changes might still leave plants too influential to the game and place too high an interaction burdern on players, junglers especially. Response there would be to continue to adjust spawn rate, maximum number possible per quadrant.

Apologies for the wall of text, lot to cover. I’ve to run off to a thing now, I’ll be back later though to post a bit more."

Following that post earlier in the week, Meddler reiterated that they plan to remove crit chance runes sometime in 2017 along with doing general work on runes!

"We haven't decided to remove or heavily modify crit. Might or might not happen someday, but it's not currently a decided thing.We are planning to remove crit runes sometime next year when we do work on runes in general (later half of the year most likely, given work's dependent on the new client being out to start a lot of it)."Meddler Permalink

Meddler also briefly commented on the next class update after the assassin update, noting that Vanguard tanks and Divers are the two classes in the running:

"Anonagon sums up our current thinking pretty well. If we were to do a fighter update we'd want to focus on divers as the class most in need of distinction and game health work. Vanguards are also the other class we think's in biggest need of work though, so very possible they might get an update first."

"PBE's good for feel feedback, general discussion and bug finding. It's not a good source of balance data though so we don't use it much to assess power (games aren't well matched, people don't play competitively, extremely weird team comps etc).

In Karthus's case he's one of the champs we'll want to look at once 6.22's out, see whether or not he's in need of 6.23 or 6.24 work. On one hand Edge of Night could be a good pick against him, on the other hand his passive ensures a fairly solid baseline of performance in teamfights so an assassin meta's not necessarily so bad for him."

Syndra's spheres get moved at a speed of 1600 once they've been hit by her E. The E itself has a speed of 2500, spheres and units it knocks back do not.

Q cast also serves as a warning indicator of incoming stun, with a 0.5s delay between cast and appearance (it doesn't instantly appear and start moving).

That's not an argument by itself that Syndra's stun combo is or isn't appropriately dodgeable, wanted to provide additional information though. Would also suggest that as WoonStruck mentions the W can be a bigger factor in reliable stuns than the straight QE combo.

In terms of Syndra's balance I expect she'll be on our list of 'champs we need to at least consider' in 6.23."

When asked about Soraka with the new support item testing on the PBE, Meddler noted:

"No current plans for Soraka changes. I'd be a bit surprised if the Shield/Heal power on Redemption was too big an issue for Soraka, there's enough of it in the game now if she's getting Redemption early/mid game she's giving up another Shield/Heal item she could have got instead."

When asked if they are keeping an eye on Nasus post 6.21 buff, Meddler noted:

"That buff does seem to have landed Nasus in a pretty good spot so far. Will need to keep an eye on him, see both how pre-season affects him and how strong he gets with build changes optimized around the new ult mechanic (guessing not much change from that, but worth watching)."

Meddler also noted that Garen was on the list of champions they are looking at in near future:

"Quote:

You guys got any plans for a similar touch up buff for Garen? Like Nasus, his winrate has been on a decline for a while. For Garen specifically, it's due to nerfs to several of his items & the constant presence of Rylia's.

Garen's on our list after urgent pre-season emergent stuff. Going to see if we can find a buff we like for 6.24 or 7.1."

Produced and mixed by Zedd. Vocals performed by Tim James. Orchestral arrangement, mixing, and additional production by Sebastien Najand of Riot Games. Engineered by Ryan Shanahan. Vocals production by Rock Mafia. Vocals engineered by Steve Hammons and Adam Comstock. Vocals mixed by Ryan Shanahan and Zedd. Mastered by Tom Norris and Ryan Shanahan."

For those interested, Zedd will be doing a LIVE performance of IGNITE during the opening of the 2016 World Championship finals!

PSA: Scams making the rounds again!

I'm hearing a lot of chatter about a certain scam (or few) going around. The usual suspects are popping up with promises of free RP, free skins, etc. Please DO NOT click on these links! What these websites tend to do instead is log your credentials and steal your account. They can also appear harmless, but may have malicious scripts running the background. If you’ve visited any suspicious websites, I would strongly suggest you go ahead and scan your computer with your preferred antivirus program.

Any promotions or events ran will be announced and confirmed by Riot -- www.riotgames.com, www.leagueoflegends.com, or www.lolesports.com.

Q: But I entered my username and password into this website! Should I change my password?

Q: I was sent a suspicious link from a friend I trust but I don’t recognize it, what should I do?

A: USE CAUTION! If it’s not hosted on one of the websites above, we cannot ensure your computer’s security if you visit them. Remember, facechecking the web is dangerous, so use your best judgement. Be sure to have your antivirus programs up-to-date.

If you cannot log into your account at all, you can recover your password by using the password recovery here. Still having issues? Please contact support.

We also have an extensive Knowledge Base article available with additional tips and tricks on what you can do to ensure your account is secure Please give this a thorough read if you have a chance!

PS. Thank you for reading this far :)"

Quick Hits - Clubs Outage, Engineering Blog, & more

[Quick hits is our own mini news collection inside a red post collection - including shorter or easy to digest bits and repeat information you may have missed in other posts! Let us know what you think!]

Riot martlet recently jumped on boards to discuss recent problems with Clubs on live servers. She cites a tool issue that shut down the service unintentionally and notes they resolved the majority of issues by Monday -Clubs Outage Oct 2016.

REMINDERS

To round out tonight's red post collection, here are a few reminders on current promotions or limited time events!

The 2016 World Championship continues with FINALS onOctober 29th!

Championship Zed, Worlds 2016 summoner icons, legacy content, and more is available through November 6th! Don't forget to head to the shop to buy your championship jewels for IP to upgrade your 2016 WC summoner icons during broad cast days!

THE TEEMOING is upon us! New content such as Little Devil Teemo & Betwitching Morgana & Tristana plus legacy Halloween content in the shop through November 3rd!